Archives For The Past

The “new” dinosaur illustrated above is impressive enough to merit its naming in honor of Sauron in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Sauroniops, which means “eye of Sauron,” was one of those enormous bipedal predators that Jurassic Park keeps reproducing despite numerous warnings and unnumbered devoured guests.

Fittingly, the new genus was identified through the discovery of a bone related to the eye socket of the beast. And, as all fans of Middle Earth know, Sauron’s piercing eye marks his terrible presence in the world.

Tolkien isn’t the only author to receive this sort of homage. In a humorous post celebrating the discovery of this new dinosaur in 2012, one writer pointed out:

Last week, the colossal Moroccan theropod Sauroniops joined the ranks of Mojoceratops and Dracorex Hogwarsti, recently discovered dinosaurs named after nerd icons.

As for the Sauronic fossil itself, and its full story of its identification, you can download the complete official report in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica

One of the things that most amazes me about paleontology is the skill (imagination?) they have when they reconstruct ancient life forms with very few fossils. In fact, in the case of Sauroniops, there is only a single bone fragment!

Despite the lack of evidence, it’s probably safe to suppose that Sauroniops was binocular, like other related species. However, that remains conjecture, and it is utterly possible that this new genus was a cyclops variety, more akin to Sauron non corporeal

C.S. Lewis & Dinosaurs

Lewis readily recognized that his deep appreciation for the past made him an oddity in Oxford. He eschewed the essence of the modernism that enraptured most of his peers. Lewis was a man rooted in history. He praised its merits and avoided its pitfalls. All of this, he confessed, made him a “dinosaur.”

He used the image as a metaphor for himself and his vocation, “explaining as clearly as I can the way in which I approach my work.” When he assumed his chair at Cambridge University, he delivered a memorable lecture, entitled De Descriptione Temporum. The text of the entire lecture is available here, but only the pertinent portion is quoted below.

And now for the claim: which sounds arrogant but, I hope, is not really so. I have said that the vast change which separates you from Old Western has been gradual and is not even now complete. Wide as the chasm is, those who are native to different sides of it can still meet; are meeting in this room. This is quite normal at times of great change.

The correspondence of Henry More* and Descartes is an amusing example; one would think the two men were writing in different centuries. And here comes the rub. I myself belong far more to that Old Western order than to yours. I am going to claim that this, which in one way is a disqualification for my task, is yet in another a qualification. The disqualification is obvious. You don’t want to be lectured on Neanderthal Man by a Neanderthaler, still less on dinosaurs by a dinosaur. And yet, is that the whole story?

If a live dinosaur dragged its slow length into the laboratory, would we not all look back as we fled? What a chance to know at last how it really moved and looked and smelled and what noises it made!

And if the Neanderthaler could talk, then, though his lecturing technique might leave much to be desired, should we not almost certainly learn from him some things about him which the best modern anthropologist could never have told us? He would tell us without knowing he was telling.

One thing I know: I would give a great deal to hear any ancient Athenian, even a stupid one, talking about Greek tragedy. He would know in his bones so much that we seek in vain. At any moment some chance phrase might, unknown to him, show us where modern scholarship had been on the wrong track for years.

Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you somewhat as that Athenian might stand. I read as a native texts that you must read as foreigners. You see why I said that the claim was not really arrogant; who can be proud of speaking fluently his mother tongue or knowing his way about his father’s house?

It is my settled conviction that in order to read Old Western literature aright you must suspend most of the responses and unlearn most of the habits you have acquired in reading modern literature. And because this is the judgement of a native, I claim that, even if the defence of my conviction is weak, the fact of my conviction is a historical datum to which you should give full weight.

That way, where I fail as a critic, I may yet be useful as a specimen. I would even dare to go further. Speaking not only for myself but for all other Old Western men whom you may meet, I would say, use your specimens while you can. There are not going to be many more dinosaurs.

As Lewis was preparing to broadcast this inaugural lecture, the BBC sent him an edited copy of the presentation “designed more than anything else to remove the lecture from the special Cambridge setting.” In his response, Lewis indicated that the dinosaurian references had already gained some public traction.

I return one copy with my corrections which, as you see, embody most of yours. Strictly speaking, if we want to detach it as cleanly as possible from its original academic context, it ought to end with the end of the second para. on p. 17: but as the dinosaur has already achieved some popularity, you may want to keep the rest. I don’t mind either way.

Fortunately, Lewis was not the only dinosaur roaming around, reminding us of important truths. In his closing in a 1955 letter to Dorothy Sayers, Lewis writes:

My brother joins me in all good wishes for Easter. Shd. [should] we someday form a Dinosaurs’ Club (with an annual dinner in the Victoria & Albert)?

In 1957 he would address his renowned friend as “sister Dinosaur.” It would have been fascinating to see who would have joined Sayers on the roster of the Dinosaurs’ Club Lewis imagines.

Sadly, as Lewis’ health seriously declined in 1963, he wrote to a correspondent a sort of epitaph.

Thanks for the kind things you say, but look for no help from me. I am but a fossil dinosaur now.

C.S. Lewis recognized himself to be a dinosaur, as he defined it. And in this comment, he suggests that he is becoming a simple fossil. Fortunately, however, this is one of the cases where he was wrong. Just as Lewis is alive, even now, in the presence of his Savior, so too his words continue to speak life and wisdom to our confused world.